Small, Wooden Fridge Magnets

I wanted to make something small and easy to make as a "Thank you for coming to my party" gift, or just as a small gift in general. This Instructable will teach you how to create an easy fridge magnet from a branch of hazel wood with a plasticky/smooth feel. It is really easy to make and requires little to no tools.

• A hazel tree (or some other tree with a suitable sized branches)
• Sand paper (p60, p100, p120, p240, p360, p800)
• Danish oil (optional)
• Small magnets
• Something that can drill a hole for the magnets to go in
• Glue
• A saw (I used a hacksaw)

Before we can get started with the sanding, we need to choose what branch to cut and where to cut it. I recommend cutting at the base of the branch and cutting a branch that is around 1" in diameter. You won't need all the wood that you cut off, but you could use the rest of the wood for marshmallow sticks or something else. Once you have cut the branch off, cut it into 1.5 to 2 cm pieces. I would recommend putting the branch in a vice to hold it still whilst you cut.

Now that we have cut the wood to size, it is time to sand. Once we have finished, there should be a very smooth, plasticky feel to the top. You might find that you have a very rough cut and maybe some marks from burning or paint on your saw. If you have this I would recommend using P60 sandpaper to get rid of all the sawing marks and any other unwanted marks.

When using the P100 sandpaper, go round in circles so the sanding marks can't be seen easily. I would recommend doing the same on all sandpaper grits. Bear in mind that if there are any imperfections now is the time to sand them off since you are using a rough grit. Don't worry much about the back of the fridge magnet since this won't be seen. However, if you do want to make it a bit smoother, you can use the P60 sandpaper just to smooth it a bit. You also might want to go round the edges a bit with the P100 to get rid of any roughness.

With P120 you should do the same as what you did with P100. Make sure you sand in circles because it sticks out and it will look unnatural and you wont be able to see the grain as well. Keep on doing this until you get to the fines grit, P800.

These grits are where you are really polishing the wood. Again, go round in circles and occasionally dust off your sandpaper so that the sandpaper is doing the most that it can. You will know when to move up a grit because the wood will be a lot smoother. If you can't tell whether the wood is smoother, sand for about 1 to 1.5 minutes. When you get to P360, go around the edges again to remove the rough parts. Once you have finished with all the grits, you can go around the bark a little with the P800 very gently to remove all the rough areas.

Once you have finished sanding completely, it is time to add the magnet. I used round neodymium magnets and a pillar drill to drill the holes. You could use a drill but since I had a pillar drill to hand, I used it since it would make a straight cut. I would recommend doing a shallower hole than you intend to make and then test how far you have left to drill by putting the magnet in and seeing how much it sticks out. You could use an iron screw or something like that to take it out afterwards. Once you have drilled the hole to the correct size, put some glue (I used super glue) into the hole and push the magnet in. Leave to dry.

You don't have to do this step but I thought it would look nicer if I added some finishing touches. I added some danish oil to enhance the grain and, once that had dried, I used my pyrography kit to burn the date into the face of the wood.